An Open Letter to the Father’s That Weren’t There; It’s Not too Late

I didn’t want to post this on yesterday because I believe that Father’s Day is reserved for the men that deserve to get recognition. The ones that takes turns getting up at night when the baby is crying. The dads that have to rush home from work to get to little league practices and then help with homework because mom has to cook dinner. Those men deserve all the days of being spoiled they can get.

Life isn’t lunch meat or milk. There’s no expiration date on when you can say, “I need to start over,” or “I want to make things right.” There are so many father’s out here that weren’t there when their children were kids and they don’t know how to make that right. It’s too late for ice cream and Barbie dolls or GI Joes. It’s too late for camping in the backyard and little league games. So they just let year after year go until they’re strangers to the people that share their DNA. Not realizing it’s never too late to at the very least have a friendship.

Holding grudges against your father for not being there only hurts you. I spent years trying to be a better man than my father and in the end I’m no better than him because the ultimate character of a man is to be able to forgive. A lot of our father’s just weren’t ready for fatherhood. They didn’t know how to be dads and by the time they were willing to try or realized their mistakes it was too late. At least in their eyes. So it’s up to us to reach out to them, maybe we’ll never have the father/ son relationship we craved as children but there’s value in becoming their friend. In getting to know where you came from. There’s value in your children knowing where they came from.

The easiest thing in the world is to make a mistake or screw up and walk away. Saying to yourself, “They were good without me as children, so why would they need me as teenagers or adults?” Just because a child grows up doesn’t mean he or she ever stops being your child. Even if it’s just a phone call once a week or Sunday dinner at Popeye’s, that quality time does wonders.